The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett

Theosophical University Press Edition

Letter No. 20c

Received August, 1882.

X Except insofar, that he constantly uses the terms "god" and "Christ"
which taken in their esoteric sense simply mean "Good" — in its dual aspect of the
abstract and the concrete and nothing more dogmatic, Eliphas Levi is not in any
direct conflict with our teachings. It is again a straw blown out of a hay-stack
and accused by the wind to belong to a hay-rick. Most of those, whom you may
call, if you like, candidates for Deva Chan — die and are reborn in the
Kama-Loka "without remembrance"; though (and just because) they do get some of it back
in the Deva Chan. Nor can we call it a full, but only a partial remembrance.
You would hardly call "remembrance" a dream of yours; some particular scene or scenes,
within whose narrow limits you would find enclosed a few persons — those whom you
loved best, with an undying love, that holy feeling that alone survives, and — not
the slightest recollection of any other events or scenes? Love and Hatred
are the only immortal feelings, the only survivors from the wreck of Ye-damma,
or the phenomenal world. Imagine yourself then, in Deva-Chan with those you may have loved
with such immortal love; with the familiar shadowy scenes connected with them for a background
and — a perfect blank for everything else relating to your interior, social, political,
literary and social life. And then, in the face of that spiritual, purely cogitative existence,
of that unalloyed felicity which, in proportion with the intensity of the feeling that
created it, lasts from a few to several thousand years — call it the "personal
remembrance of A. P. Sinnett" — if you can. Dreadfully monotonous! — you may
think. — Not in the least — I answer. Have you experienced monotony during —
say — that moment which you considered then and now so consider
it — as the moment of the highest bliss you have ever felt? — Of course not. —
Well, no more will you experience it there, in that passage through the Eternity in which
a million of years is no longer than a second. There, where there is no consciousness
of an external world there can be no discernment to mark differences, hence, — no
perception of contrasts of monotony or variety; nothing in short, outside that immortal
feeling of love and sympathetic attraction whose seeds are planted in the fifth, whose
plants blossom luxuriantly in and around the fourth, but whose roots have to penetrate
deep into the sixth principle, if it would survive the lower groups. (And now I propose
to kill two birds with one stone — to answer your and Mr. Hume's questions at the
same time) — remember, both, that we create ourselves our devachan
as our Avitchi while yet on earth, and mostly during the latter days and even
moments of our intellectual, sentient lives. That feeling which is the strongest in us
at that supreme hour; when, as in a dream, the events of a long life, to their minutest
details, are marshalled in the greatest order in a few seconds in our vision
(1) — that feeling will become the fashioner of
our bliss or woe, the life-principle of our future existence. In the latter we
have no substantial being, but only a present and momentary existence — whose duration
has no bearing upon, as no effect, or relation to its being — which as every other
effect of a transitory cause will be as fleeting, and in its turn will vanish and cease
to be. The real full remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the minor cycle —
not before. In Kama Loka those who retain their remembrance, will not enjoy it at the
supreme hour of recollection. — Those who know they are dead in their physical
body — can only be either adepts or — sorcerers; and these two are the exceptions
to the general rule. Both having been "co-workers with nature," the former for
good, the latter — for bad, in her work of creation and in that
of destruction, they are the only ones who may be called immortal — in
the Kabalistic and the esoteric sense of course. Complete or true immortality, —
which means an unlimited sentient existence, can have no breaks and stoppages,
no arrest of Self consciousness. And even the shells of those good men
whose page will not be found missing in the great Book of Lives at the threshold of the
Great Nirvana, even they will regain their remembrance and an appearance of Self consciousness,
only after the sixth and seventh principles with the essence of the 5th (the latter having
to furnish the material for even that partial recollection of personality which is necessary
for the object in Deva Chan) — have gone to their gestation period, not before.
Even in the case of suicides, and those who have perished by violent death, even in their
case, consciousness requires a certain time to establish its new center of gravity, and
evolve, as Sir W. Hamilton would have it — its "perception proper" henceforth to
remain distinct from "sensation proper." Thus, when man dies, his "Soul" (fifth prin.)
becomes unconscious and loses all remembrance of things internal as well as external.
Whether his stay in Kama Loka has to last but a few moments, hours, days, weeks, months
or years; whether he died a natural or a violent death; whether it occurred in his young
or old age, and, whether the Ego was good, bad or indifferent — his consciousness
leaves him as suddenly as the flame leaves the wick, when blown out. When life has retired
from the last particle in the brain matter, his perceptive faculties become extinct forever,
his spiritual powers of cogitation and volition — (all those faculties in short,
which are neither inherent in, nor acquirable by organic matter) — for the time
being. His Mayavi rupa may be often thrown into objectivity, as in the cases
of apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected with the knowledge of (whether
latent or potential), or, owing to the intensity of the desire to see or appear to someone,
shooting through the dying brain, the apparition will be simply — automatical; it
will not be due to any sympathetic attraction, or to any act of volition, and no more
than the reflection of a person passing unconsciously near a mirror, is due to the desire
of the latter.

Having thus explained the position, I will sum up and ask again why it should be maintained
that what is given by Eliphas Levi and expounded by H.P.B., is "in direct conflict" with
my teaching? E.L. is an Occultist, and a Kabalist, and writing for those who are supposed
to know the rudiments of the Kabalistic tenets, uses the peculiar phraseology of his doctrine,
and H.P.B. follows suit. The only omission she was guilty of, was not to add the word
"Western" between the two words "Occult" and doctrine (see third line of Editor's
note).She is a fanatic in her way, and is unable to write with anything like system
and calmness, or to remember that the general public needs all the lucid explanations
that to her may seem superfluous. And, as you are sure to remark — "but this is
also our case; and you too seem to forget it," — I will give you a few
more explanations. As remarked on the margin of the October Theosophist
the word "immortality" has for the initiates and occultists quite a different meaning.
We call "immortal" but the one Life in its universal collectivity and entire
or Absolute Abstraction; that which has neither beginning nor end, nor any break in its
continuity. Does the term apply to anything else? Certainly it does not. Therefore the
earliest Chaldeans had several prefixes to the word "immortality," one of which is the
Greek, rarely-used term — panæonic immortality, i.e. beginning with the
manvantara and ending with the pralaya of our Solar Universe. It lasts
the æon, or "period," of our pan or "all nature." Immortal then is he,
in the panæonic immortality whose distinct consciousness and perception of
Self — under whatever form — undergoes no disjunction at any time, not for
one second, during the period of his Egoship. Those periods are several in number,
each having its distinct name in the secret doctrines of the Chaldeans, Greeks, Egyptians
and Aryans, and, were they but amenable to translation, — which they are not, at
least so long as the idea involved remains inconceivable to the Western mind — I
could give them to you. Suffice for you, for the present to know, that a man, an Ego
like yours or mine, may be immortal from one to the other Round. Let us say I begin my
immortality at the present fourth Round, i.e., having become a full adept (which
unhappily I am not) I arrest the hand of Death at will, and when finally obliged to submit
to it, my knowledge of the secrets of nature puts me in a position to retain my consciousness
and distinct perception of Self as an object to my own reflective consciousness and cognition;
and thus avoiding all such dismemberments of principles, that as a rule take
place after the physical death of average humanity, I remain as Koothoomi in my Ego
throughout the whole series of births and lives across the seven worlds and Arupa lokas
until finally I land again on this earth among the fifth race men of the full fifth Round
beings. I would have been, in such a case — "immortal" for an inconceivable (to
you) long period embracing many milliards of years. And yet am "I" truly immortal
for all that? Unless I make the same efforts as I do now, to secure for myself another
such furlough from Nature's Law, Koothoomi will vanish, and may become a Mr. Smith or an
innocent Babu, when his leave expires. There are men who become such mighty beings. There
are men among us who may become immortal during the remainder of the Rounds, and then
take their appointed place among the highest Chohans, the Planetary conscious
"Ego-Spirits." Of course the monad "never perishes whatever happens," but Eliphas speaks
of the personal not of the Spiritual Egos, and you have fallen into the same
mistake (and very naturally too) as C.C.M.; though I must confess the passage in Isis
was very clumsily expressed, as I had already remarked to you, about this same paragraph
in one of my letters long ago. I had to "exercise my ingenuity" over it — as the
Yankees express it, but, succeeded in mending the hole, I believe, — as I will have
to, many times more, I am afraid, before we have done with Isis. It really ought
to be rewritten for the sake of the "family honour."

X It is certainly inconceivable, therefore, there is no mortal
use to discuss the subject.

X You misconceived the teaching, because you were not aware of what you
are now told: (a) who are the true co-workers with nature; and (b) that it is
by no means all the evil co-workers, who drop into the eighth sphere and are
annihilated. (2) The potency for evil is as great in man — aye greater — than
the potentiality for good. An exception to the rule of nature, that exception,
which in the case of adepts and sorcerers becomes in its turn a rule, has again
its own exceptions. Read carefully the passage that C.C.M. left unquoted — on pp.
352-3, Isis Vol. I, Parag. 3. Again she omits to distinctly state that the
case mentioned relates but to those powerful sorcerers whose co-partnership with nature
for evil affords to them the means of forcing her hand, and thus accord them also panaeonic
immortality. But oh, what kind of immortality, and how preferable is annihilation to their
lives! Don't you see that everything you find in Isis is delineated, hardly sketched —
nothing completed or fully revealed. Well the time has come, but where are the workers
for such a tremendous task?

Says Mr. Hume (see affixed letter (3) marked passages — 10
[X] and 1, 2, 3). And now when you have read the objections
to that most unsatisfactory doctrine — as Mr. Hume calls it — a doctrine
which you had to learn first as a whole, before proceeding to study it in parts, —
at the risk of satisfying you no better, I will proceed to explain the latter.

(1) Although not "wholly dissevered from their sixth and seventh principles" and quite
"potent" in the seance room, nevertheless to the day when they would have died a natural
death, they are separated from the higher principles by a gulf. The sixth and seventh
remain passive and negative, whereas, in cases of accidental death the higher
and the lower groups mutually attract each other. In cases of good and innocent Egos,
moreover, the latter gravitates irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus —
either slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or, sleeps a dreamless profound sleep until
the hour strikes. With a little reflection, and an eye to eternal justice and fitness
of things, you will see why. The victim whether good or bad is irresponsible
for his death, even if his death were due to some action in a previous life or an antecedent
birth; was an act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still, it was not the direct
result of an act deliberately committed by the personal Ego of that life during
which he happened to be killed. Had he been allowed to live longer he may have atoned
for his antecedent sins still more effectually; and even now, the Ego having been made
to pay off the debt of his maker (the previous Ego) is free from the blows of retributive
justice. The Dhyan Chohans who have no hand in the guidance of the living human
Ego, protect the helpless victim when it is violently thrust out of its element into a
new one, before it is matured and made fit and ready for it. We tell you what we know,
forwe are made to learn it through personalexperience. You
know what I mean and I can say no more! Yes; the victims whether good or bad sleep, to
awake but at the hour of the last Judgment, which is that hour of the supreme
struggle between the sixth and seventh, and the fifth and fourth at the threshold of the
gestation state. And even after that, when the sixth and seventh carrying off a portion
of the fifth have gone into their akasic samadhi, even then it may happen that the spiritual
spoil from the fifth will prove too weak to be reborn in Deva-Chan; in which case it will
there and then reclothe itself in a new body, the subjective "Being" created from the
Karma of the victim (or no-victim, as the case may be) and enter upon a new earth-existence
whether upon this or any other planet. In no case then, — with the exception of
suicides and shells, is there any possibility for any other to be attracted to a seance
room. And it is clear that "this teaching is not in opposition to our
former doctrine" and that while "shells" will be many, — Spirits very few.

(2) There is a great difference in our humble opinion. We, who look at it from a standpoint
which would prove very unacceptable to Life-insurance Companies, say, that there are very
few, if any, of the men who indulge in the above enumerated vices, who feel perfectly sure
that such a course of action will lead them eventually to premature death. Such is the
penalty of Maya. The "vices" will not escape their punishment; but it is the
cause not the effect that will be punished, especially an unforeseen
though probable effect. As well call a suicide a man who meets his death in a
storm at sea, as one who kills himself with "overstudy." Water is liable to drown a man,
and too much brain-work to produce a softening of the brain which may carry him away.
In such a case no one ought to cross the Kalapani nor even to take a bath for
fear of getting faint in it and drowned (for we all know of such cases); nor should a
man do his duty, least of all sacrifice himself for even a laudable and highly-beneficent
cause, as many of us — (H.P.B. for one) — do. Would Mr. Hume call her a
suicide were she to drop down dead over her present work? Motive is
everything and man is punished in a case of direct responsibility, never otherwise.
In the victim's case the natural hour of death was anticipated accidentally,
while in that of the suicide, death is brought on voluntarily and with a full and deliberate
knowledge of its immediate consequences. Thus a man who causes his death in a fit of temporary
insanity is not a felo de se to the great grief and often trouble of
the Life-insurance Companies. Nor is he left a prey to the temptations of the Kama loka
but falls asleep like any other victim. A Guiteau will not remain in the earth's
atmosphere with his higher principles over him — inactive and paralysed, still
there. Guiteau is gone into a state during the period of which, he will be ever
firing at his President,— thereby tossing into confusion and shuffling the destinies of millions
of persons; where he will be ever tried and ever hung. Bathing in the
reflections of his deeds and thoughts — especially those he indulged in on the scaffold
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [Two lines in original have been deleted here. —
Ed.] his fate. As for those who were "knoched over by cholera, or plague, or jungle fever"
they could not have succumbed had they not the germs for the development of such diseases
in them from birth.

"So then, the great bulk of the physical phenomena of Spiritualists" my dear brother are
not "due to these Spirits" but indeed — to "shells."

(3) "The spirits of very fair average good people dying natural deaths remain . . . in
the earth's atmosphere from a few days to a few years," the period depending on their
readiness to meet their — creature not their creator; a very abstruse subject
you will learn later on, when you too are more prepared. But why should they "communicate"?
Do those you love communicate with you during their sleep objectively? Your spirits, in
hours of danger, or intense sympathy, vibrating on the same current of thought —
which in such cases, creates a kind of telegraphic spiritual wires between your two bodies —
may meet and mutually impress your memories; but then you are living, not
dead bodies. But how can an unconscious 5th principle (see supra) impress
or communicate with a living organism, unless it has already become a shell?
If, for certain reasons they remain in such a state of lethargy for several years, the
spirits of the living may ascend to them, as you were already told; and this may take
place still easier than in Devachan, where the spirit is too much engrossed
in his personal bliss to pay much attention to an intruding element. I say — they
cannot.

(4) I am sorry to contradict your statement. I know of no "thousands of spirits" who do
appear in circles — and moreover positively do not know of one "perfectly pure
circle" — and "teach the highest morality." I hope I may not be classed with slanderers
in addition to other names lately bestowed upon me, but truth compels me to declare that
Allan Kardec was not quite immaculate during his lifetime, nor has become a very pure
spirit since. As to teaching the "highest morality," we have a Dugpa-Shammar not
far from where I am residing. Quite a remarkable man. Not very powerful as a sorcerer
but excessively so, as a drunkard, a thief, a liar, and — an orator. In this latter
role he could give points to and beat Messrs. Gladstone, Bradlaugh, and even
the Rev. H. W. Be{e}cher — than whom, there is no more eloquent preacher of morality,
and no greater breaker of his Lord's commandments in the U.S.A. This Shapa-tung Lama,
when thirsty, can make an enormous audience of "yellow-cap" laymen weep all their yearly
supply of tears, with the narrative of his repentance and suffering in the morning, and
then get drunk in the evening and rob the whole village by mesmerizing them into a dead
sleep. Preaching and teaching morality with an end in view proves very little. Read "J.P.T.'s"
article in Light and what I say will be corroborated.

(To A.P.S.) X p6 {p126 above}). The "obscuration" comes on only when the last man of whatever Round has
passed into the Sphere of Effects. Nature is too well, too mathematically adjusted to
cause mistakes to happen in the exercise of its functions. The obscuration of the planet
on which are now evoluting the races of the fifth Round men — will, of course "be
behind the few avantcouriers" who are now here. But before that time
comes we will have to part, to meet no more, as the editor of the Pioneer and
his humble correspondent.

And now having shown that the October number of the Theosophist was not
utterly wrong, nor was it at "variance with the later teaching," may K.H. set
you to "reconcile the two"?

To reconcile you still more with Eliphas, I will send you a number of his MSS —
that have never been published, in a large, clear, beautiful handwriting with my comments
all through. Nothing better than that can give you a key to Kabalistic puzzles.

I have to write to Mr. Hume this week; to give him consolation, and to show, that unless
he has a strong desire to live, he need not trouble himself about Devachan.
Unless a man loves well, or hates as well, he will be neither in Devachan
nor in Avitchi. "Nature spews the luke-warm out of her mouth" means only that she annihilates
their personal Egos (not the shells, nor yet the sixth principle) in the Kama
Loka and the Devachan. This does not prevent them from being immediately reborn —
and, if their lives were not very very bad, — there is no reason why the
eternal monad should not find the page of that life intact in the Book of Life.

1. That vision takes place when a person is already proclaimed dead. The
brain is the last organ that dies. (return to text)

2. Annihilated suddenly as human Egos and personalities,
lasting in that world of pure matter under various material forms an inconceivable length
of time before they can return to primeval matter. (return to text)